Twitter Can Censor by Country - Able to Block Tweets Geographically, Marking Content as Withheld

Twitter Inc. says it can now make content selectively available to users based on geography, and plans to use that ability to enter countries with "different ideas" about freedom of expression as a human right -- reflecting the difficult ethical questions facing Internet companies.

Twitter bows to pressure over censorshipTwitter, the microblogging service that has made a virtue of being used as an organising tool by political activists, has bowed to the realities of global business with a new approach to censorship.

Twitter to restrict user content in some countriesTwitter announced Thursday that it would begin restricting Tweets in certain countries, marking a policy shift for the social media platform that helped propel the popular uprisings recently sweeping across the Middle East.

Tweets still must flowOne year ago, we posted "The Tweets Must Flow," in which we said,

"The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact ... almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right. Many countries also agree that freedom of expression carries with it responsibilities and has limits."

As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.

Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries' limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country -- while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

We haven't yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we've expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.

There's more information in our Help pages, both on our Policy and about Your Account Settings.